Costa Rica is, in many ways, firmly on the road to becoming a `developed´ country. However, in the pursuit of this 2021 goal, it is currently experiencing what has been described as a ´struggle in progress´3 in which recent governments and the big business sector are looking increasingly towards right-leaning economic strategies, while most of civic society, academia and social and environmental movements are being drawn together in a search for alternative models of sustainable development that integrate economic growth with social investment and the protection of cultural and natural resources.
Costa Rica’s current stature in the region has been achieved primarily as the result of a series of left-leaning liberal and progressive policies dating back over more than a century, while in recent years a more ‘neo-liberal’, center-right approach of export-led production and free markets has been pursued as the key to growth and progress. The effects of this switch in ideology are currently dividing the country somewhat. This separation is reflected in the country’s double-sided development strategy which simultaneously promotes the growth of a high-tech transnational export economy while also nurturing a domestic-oriented, socially and environmentally responsible market for ecotourism and environmental services.
